A New Book Discussion Program : Mysterious California

Mysterious California is a compelling and innovative book discussion program provided free to libraries by the California Center for the Book. The Buena Park Library District will be hosting two simultaneous sessions of this program in January and February, 2008.

One session will be offered on Thursday afternoons from 1:00-2:30 pm on:

• January 10th (features a short film, Mysterious California: Four Authors, in which the writers talk about the influence of California's places on their work)
• January 24th
• February 14th
• February 28th

The second session will be offered on Thursday evenings from 6:30-7:45 pm on:

• January 10th (features a short film, Mysterious California: Four Authors, in which the writers talk about the influence of California's places on their work)
• January 24th
• February 14th
• February 28th

The four mysteries chosen for this program represent a cross-section of crime fiction spawned by California’s locales. The writers and novels to be included in the new series cover a large terrain geographically, historically, and culturally:

In Southland, Nina Revoyr brings us a compelling story of race, love, murder, and history against the backdrop of Los Angeles. A young Japanese-American law student, Jackie Ishida, discovers that four black teenagers were killed in her grandfather’s store during the Watts Riots of 1965, and that the murders were never solved or reported. In the process of piecing together the story of the boys’ deaths, Jackie unearths secrets of her family’s history. In the process of learning the truth about the crime, readers experience the satisfaction, and shock, of learning unknown stories about California’s past and the invisible influence the past plays on the present.

In Laurie R. King’s The Art of Detection, San Francisco homicide detective Kate Martinelli is drawn into the surreal world of Sherlock Holmes enthusiasts, when one is murdered and it appears that an unpublished Holmes manuscript may be at the root of the crime. The novel's perspective shifts back and forth between Kate investigating the present-day crime and the unnamed narrator of the manuscript relating a tale of forbidden love and violent death. The novel beautifully evokes San Francisco in the early 20th century and in the modern day, in all its unpredictable, colorful variety.

Shell Games, the first of Kirk Russell's John Marquez novels, takes place along the northern California coast and features a unique sleuth: an ex-DEA agent who now heads a special investigative unit of the California Department of Fish and Game. As Marquez stalks the culprits in a multimillion-dollar poaching ring, he runs up against an old nemesis from his DEA days.

Nadia Gordon takes us into the heart of the food and wine culture of the wine country with her Sunny McCoskey Napa Valley Mysteries. When the heir apparent to a major vineyard is shot dead in Sharpshooter, Sunny’s eccentric wine maker friend Wade is arrested for the murder. Sunny sets out to prove his innocence. Her investigation takes her into the tangled politics and personalities of the wine industry, and to the threat posed to the valley by an insect, the glassy-winged sharpshooter.

Copies of each of these books will be available for check-out at the Library. Any questions, call the Library at 714-826-4100 x125 and ask for Phyllis.